#but letters & popups work

[angelsndragons]

hi, veilguard peeps, can we take a moment to talk about rook mercar? because rook mercar is possibly one of the most batshit rooks in the game and they deserve to be recognized as such.

but not only that, mercar's backstory shades the shadow dragons and venatori conflicts in very interesting ways so let's talk about them.

so first, the nessus job.

i don't blame you for forgetting (or not knowing, i know the shadow dragons aren't everyone's cup of tea) so here's your quick refresher from the shadow dragon background blurb found in the character creator:

Breaker of Bonds

“Rook risked everything to liberate the enslaved people of Tevinter, even knowing it would anger the ruling elite. The foundling Rook was adopted into a military family and joined the Shadow Dragons to fight from the shadows for change in Minrathous. While guarding a visiting dignitary who was investigating a slavery ring in the nearby city of Nessus, Rook concluded that the mission would fail without throwing caution to the wind. Alone, s/he(/they) sneaked the dignitary deep into Venatori-controlled zones and brought him back, along with the rescued slaves. These actions brought Rook to the Venatori's attention, and the Shadow Dragons decided to keep Rook out of sight.”

that is the nessus job.

except this doesn't quite square with what the game has to say about it.

the background:

first, here's the viper's letter about the job:

so right away, note how weird it is that the viper's writing mercar's letter. i say this is weird because, with the other factions, the person writing rook's letter is someone they're familiar with, usually in a position of leadership. antoine and evka are the notable leadership exceptions here, having actually been involved in thorne's backstory actions.

here's the rub: mercar doesn't know the viper. they've heard of him, certainly, but when that little popup telling you that you've worked with these faction agents before appears, mercar doesn't have the option to act like they know the viper.

the lines mercar gets are:

it's an honor to stand beside a legend

i know he likes to make an entrance

i know he gets things done

now, i will grant you that some of the responses to mercar's comment indicate tarquin is familiar with both rook and ashur (his response to the honor line is 'well, that'll go straight to his head' while the entrance line earns the viper's comment 'no one watches the rooftops' and tarquin's exasperated 'sure, that's what he says') but the point is, for a character mercar is "supposed" to be very familiar with, neve still tells them about the name ashur. like, seriously, it's the same dialogue tag every rook gets.

which is weird because veilguard is actually pretty good at keeping track of rook's faction and seamlessly changing up the conversation while still getting across the relevant information.

but it doesn't stop there, oh no.

during mercar's unpacking scene, we get these default shadow dragon lines:

now, these right here ping for the following reasons:

varric isn't the "visiting dignitary" that rook was guarding, given that rook had to get to nessus before meeting varric

the fact that rook's backstory happens dao style, where all events are true but only one has duncan varric available to pluck rook out of the immediate consequences

minrathous slaves, specifically, are mentioned as being freed here, even though we're supposed to be in nessus. now i'm not saying that minrathous citizens can't be enslaved and sent elsewhere, i'm just pointing out the phrasing here

the magisters who were financially benefiting from the nessus ring (aka venatori and their backers) knew enough about rook to put a name and a face on them. the structure of the sentence here is that everyone knows who is "too much trouble" to keep around and that is fucking wild kids. no, seriously, that is wild. there is so much wild here, put a pin in it.

no, seriously, this matters and matches the backstory blurb that the job "brought Rook to the Venatori's attention." put a fucking pin in it.

whatever rook's feelings, they always take pride in freeing those slaves- impulsive rook just dislikes that it comes at the cost of putting the shadow dragons in danger (put a pin in it), righteous rook thinks that the shadows should have used the crackdown to start a full out war with the venatori and their magister backers mind you while finally stoic rook just hopes that the shadow dragons weathered the storm safely.

okay, so ready for more batshit mercar?

the next solas conversation is the one where rook tells solas why they're going to stop the gods and here's what mercar has to say about that operation:

i just want y'all to marinate in that little gem of a line for a sec.

done screaming yet? it's cool, take another minute. no one's doing it like mercar.

okay, so finally a fuller picture of mercar's backstory comes into focus, if you ignore the weird bits. like the fact that the shadows made a plan with varric to rescue a friend, which does not appear to be the original nessus job, mind you.

mercar met varric, something went screwy, and mercar and varric decided the only way they had a chance was to start an armed rebellion in the city of nessus. the slavery ring is busted, said rebellion is (apparently) put down, the venatori and the magisters know who to blame for it all, and mercar hightails it out of the country with varric. simple and straightforward, right?

wrong, we have so much to work through.

the fallout:

like why the fuck are ashur, mae, and dorian squatting in dock town, exactly? tarquin lives there but those three surely have a high town shadow dragon cell they can go bug, right? and why is ashur the only one of the three making any cell decisions? i mean, points to mae for being a decent house guest, i guess, but what exactly is going on here? why are the venatori breathing down the shop's neck, to the point that they knew its location well enough to deliberately target it in the save treviso route?

remember those pins? it's time to pull them.

i repeat: this is real fucking bad for the shadow dragons. unlike the rest of the origins, the shadows are a covert operation. they don't want anyone knowing who their members are, who their backers are, any of it. the people in power being able to identify shadow dragons is how you lose shadow dragons: to arrests, targeted killings, beatings, destruction of their livelihoods, etc. ya know, like the viper mentions in his letter.

the fact that the first warden can not only link rook's face and name to the shadow dragons but to very specific crimes, crimes for which rook can absolutely be arrested, should set off all the alarm bells. as dorian says, the man is more politician than warden and as charter's letter from marnas pell states, "Assume every noble Tevinter family not with Shadow Dragons has Venatori pulling strings." this is extremely bad.

after nessus, the venatori had rook's identity as mercar and what did they do? they started looking into every single person mercar had known contact with, every path they took, their home, their family, the bar they stopped in for breakfast that one time. that's how resistance cells die, by the way. including, potentially, mercar's. this is why the shadows were more than happy to see mercar out of the way for a while where they couldn't cause any more trouble; so long as they're not around, they can't compromise more of the various cells' activities and members. it's the safest move for literally everyone involved.

because the damage has been done:

mae's related to varric via marriage, by the way, if the full picture hasn't come into focus yet.

mercar and varric were id'ed in that rebellion, the venatori were pissed at the lost revenue streams and suddenly mae's knocked out of the magisterium?

yeah.

my guess is that there is no high town cell anymore because of the nessus job. for all that mae worked to ensure that dorian was out of the line of fire and squeaky clean, the shadows and their backers couldn't stop the venatori crackdown after nessus, as mentioned by ashur's letter. ashur and mae are here specifically because there is no other cell to go to.

this is why tarquin is snippy, by the by. mercar and the highbloods are drawing attention to him and endangering all of his people just by being there.

hang on, it gets worse.

because the venatori are obsessed with the viper and proving that he's the divine (he is the divine, for the record, there are too many ambient dialogues, codices, and missions pointing in that direction). and to that obsession, i say, what the fuck? how did they come to that conclusion, exactly? what trail did the divine leave behind that first got the venatori on his tail?

well, he's related to and has close ties with mae's family. secondly, the divine is known for being quietly supportive of slave liberation. but the real reason, i think, is the original nessus job.

because again, why were the shadows in nessus originally? why was mercar in nessus to meet varric in the first place? who was the "visiting dignitary" that mercar was guarding?

yeah, i think the dignitary was the divine. and i think he was there in his official capacity. it would handily explain the discrepancy that ashur knows mercar but mercar doesn't know ashur. while the divine might not have a lot of actual power, the power of the press and drawing attention to issues and plights should never be discounted. especially when it's a plausible excuse to get several minrathous shadows in place to shut down the nessus slaver ring.

the divine being guarded by a now known shadow dragon (the viper likely made an appearance, ashur is known to pop up when slave rebellions start) combined with his anti-slavery views and ties to anti-slavery politicians turned the venatori's eye on ashur's night job.

remember, the shadow dragons are officially labeled as insurgents; if the venatori can tie the divine and all his people to them? that would be a death knell for any political support for liberation. the checkmate for the anti-slavery cause for the next age.

tldr: mercar exposed their ties to the shadows (and possibly the divine's) by starting an armed rebellion with varric to free slaves and shut down a slaver hub. in response, the venatori sniped several cells using mercar and varric's likely contacts, which led to ashur, mae, and dorian squatting in the dock town shadow dragon cell instead of some high town cell.

lucky the gods show up to cause trouble, huh?

god i love this game.

[transmechanicus]

How to write in TMBTE runes

>Be windows user

>go to PC>Windows>System32>eudcedit.exe

>Run it. This opens a grid of currently empty unicode values that you can add symbols to

>Pick one, i started with the top left, E000 and descended from there (E010, E020, etc)

>You will be presented with a space to draw pixel art. Thank Sleep these designs are geometric.

>Draw the rune for A. Edit, save character. That symbol is now saved to that unicode value in your computer. Make sure they're as big as you can manage and exaggerate the little > < on some letters bc detail gets lost at smaller font sizes.

>Draw the rest of the 24 runes. Save each one. I did some well planned cutting pasting, rotating, and save-as-ing to save time (KLMN are all the same shape just spun around)

>Close the program, nice work

>Download and run the Microsoft Keyboard Creator

>File, Load keyboard (i used US-International), then click the displayed key for "A".

>In the text box that opens for that key, type U+YourUnicodeHere (Ex: U+E000)

>Repeat for every rune.

>Open Project, Properties, make sure the name and description is something recognizable and that it's saving to a preferably empty folder.

>Project, Test to make sure everything looks good.

>Project, Validate to confirm the keyboard is functional (it will give you a popup saying it validated but with warnings. Ignore them, it's just saying the runes are weird and won't display online)

>Project, Build DLL and Setup Package. This confirms your keyboard and packs it in an executable that will add it as a variation of whatever keyboard you started with. (Mine shows up as English - Sleep Token bc of my description)

>When the build is done, open file destination, run "setup" and approve changes.

>Give your computer like 5 minutes, then i recommend a restart. Without the restart, trying to use the new keyboard seems to crash for the first couple minutes, but after 30 minutes it should adjust regardless. When you're back on, in the bottom right you should see the additional option in your active keyboards. You can delete or double check the uploaded keyboards in "Edit Keyboard and Language Options" in Settings

>Lmk if anyone has issues, i'm not a computer scientist but this is working fine in Notepad, and any other text program operating out of my laptop such as Word or Powerpoint. Anything online that is pulling its unicode references from elsewhere (google docs, tumblr, presumably discord) is going to either Not Register that you're typing, or will display empty boxes. Still gnawing on an idea to fix it, if you're a computer person with ideas lmk.

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Why Spell Check (and some grammar check) isn't AI

So I've seen in the wake of Nanowrimo some people claim that spell check is AI and thus is like Gen AI, and I saw the claim originator on Twitter, but when I pressed them, they basically tried to say they had a degree in computer science, so when I pressed into them if they knew what they were talking about, they couldn't answer because obviously don't know about AI.

For some background I've done some light programming (If you look at the Korean name generator, that's all me). And I also have relatives that did programming.

Here, I can lay out how spell check works without AI or a fancy algorithm.

The oldest spellchecks didn't use AI or Gen AI, they used what is your basic corresponding tables.

If you use something like google sheets (database), you can do this pretty quickly yourself though with a lot of manpower.

Here is a list of commonly misspelled words.

Add that with another table with how they are commonly misspelled.

Then you need a table with "common typos"

Then you need one more table for "Words the user adds."

The algorithm is basically this: Set up a loop. A loop is a mechanism that has an algorithm (or set of instructions in it) which repeats until a certain instruction is met. This loop with this algorithm will check for words. In this case, anything with letters, usually encompassing ' and - (though some programs ignore dashes).

So[,][ ]it[ ]will[ ]look[ ]at[ ]letters[ ]in[ ]this[ ]sentence[ ]and[ ]figure[ ]out[ ]if[ ]it[ ]is[ ]spelled[ ]correctly.

The first loop in the previous sentence will look at the word "so" by selecting everything it knows to be a letter in English. Tada "S, o" Then correspond that to the dictionary. So shows up in the dictionary listing it has of English words. Thanks Webster. (If you're British, the OED)

The Algorithm concludes the word is spelled correctly. No more work needs to be done on So. The next word is it "i, t" correspond that to the dictionary and so on.

If you have a "bad word" for example "alot" then the work is, word is spelled incorrectly. Next "work to be done" is to find out if this word is in the "commonly misspelled" words list. If yes, then underline the word in red to get it corrected.

AKA run Algorithm to underline word (usually a few lines of code if you're doing it the old way).

Then the algorithm moves on. The function of right click/Cntrl click is saying, OK, this word, "alot" is it commonly misspelled? Here are a list of corrections according to this other table. This is the work that needs to be done: We need a popup table. We need to pull from the database this misspelling, and then we need to pull from this other database and pull corresponding correct spellings based on this. Then you set up an if-then If the user clicks on this word, change highlighted word.

This is your basic spelling algorithm. You do not need gen AI for this or AI.

Grammar works similarly. You need a table, the type of speech it is (n, v, adv, adj) and then to load in "rules" one should use. You do not need AI. You need some basic programming skills. On the table of somewhere between "Hello, world" (1) and "OMG, I created artificial intelligence like Data " (10) My "Korean name generator" is like 2.5? in difficulty (minus all of the language and cultural knowledge). Haha. Still mocking myself. But a Spellcheck is not far from that. it is like 3. You could build one fairly easily with PHP and database access to a dictionary and misspelled words with corrections.

But Google pulled from the Enron Emails.

In this case, you can sorta fuzzy logic it and create bigger algorithms, mostly to sort out the *grammar* and *New words* that were used that aren't already in the database, which basically is another loop, but with an add to database function. (i.e. table). Then you would correspond this with another loop to look at "odd grammar" and flag it.

You can use AI to sort it faster than a basic algorithm, but nope, you do not need AI to correspond it. A basic algorithm would do. You can also use AI for "words that look similar to this one" and "Words commonly used in place of this one"

But overall, You do not need AI for a grammar check. You only need a dictionary, a set of commonly held rules of English and exceptions (maybe some Noam Chomsky, though he's controversial), and then some programming skill to get past the hurdle.

But Grammar check could use AI

AI as it stands is basically a large algorithm to match large datasets to the words you use. But the problem is that the datasets are taken from users who did not volunteer to put in that information.

It is not Data on Enterprise have novel experiences of every day and learning how to function in the human world by processing it through a matrix of quantum computing.

So WHEN grammar check does use AI, the AI is mostly doing the crunching of the corresponding the information into a more neat table option, as I understand it. It is not the same thing as Gen AI or your average spell check and Microsoft algorithm from say 2000.

Those are not equal things. Instead, adding Gen AI to say, Microsoft Word, is more like stealing your words for the machine (which BTW, Microsoft absolutely did and you need to transfer out to Anti-AI programs/Apps.) and corresponding them for Gen AI future use for people who can't write worth a damn, and then "averaging" it out. Elew. Who wants to write to the average? That's anti-Creative.

And just because it uses an Algorithm, doesn't automatically use AI.

Look, I can write a algorithm now:

Loop: If you want to be strong...

Go outside.

Do cardio.

Go lift weights.

Make sure you eat a healthy diet and balanced which includes reducing refined sugars and do not eat bad fats.

That equally is a set of instructions, but that's not automatically AI.

I programmed my calculator to spit out the quadratic formula. And this isn't even officially programming, this is a script. Dudes, if you're going to call that AI, then you need help with learning computer programming.

The threshold for making AI v spellcheck is a lot, lot higher programming than a set of simple tables and a loop that looks for letters and spaces corresponding it to an existing dictionary. If that's you're threshold for AI, then when you type words, you are caught in an algorithm. Ooooooo... OMG, when you pull up a dictionary to spellcheck yourself, that's AI. C'mon. The threshold is a might higher to make AI or "victim of algorithm" as in Twitter.

So anytime someone says, "All Spellcheck uses genAI/AI" Laugh in their faces and say no. 'cause like, I'm a terrible programmer, and even I'm like, Meh, not that hard to set up spell check, give me a solid dictionary database and I'll do ya.

That said, A human will beat AI on grammar anytime and will be able to sort weird spellings faster and A-OK, or not.

[twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat]

ARIIIII HI HELLO HEY !!! i got a bit busy (i hate assessments) but I'm back and I will soon read all the things I added to my tbr that you posted !! soooo excited hehe :3 I wanted to ask how you guys are playing phanpara.... i also want to see all the fun stuff and play.. ☹☹ manifesting the banners for you so you get them easily <333 - ❄ anon

❄️ ANON MY LOVE !! welcome back!!!! :3 i hope your assessments went well…. i’m proud of you for working hard 🫂🫂🫂 AND PLS don’t feel any pressure w the tbr, my fics will always be here when you have the time !!! <3333

BUT YES . phanpara ….. i’m not gonna lie to you anon getting it downloaded on ios was a whole trial of will but 😭😭 it’s actually. fairly simple. it’s easier on android (you just need to download a bunch of apps to emulate it!!) but on ios you need to manually change your appstore region to japan. and then download a vpn app. the biggest downside w ios is that there aren’t really any good translator apps!! :(( on android you can get bubble translate which lets you translate on screen text really easily…. but you won’t get anything like that on ios. so you won’t understand what the characters are saying (unless you take screenshots and throw them into an image translator)….

buuut if you’re still fine with that!! (assuming you have ios and not android)…. then i’ll leave the instructions down below :33 i’ll try to make them as clear as possible but just ask if you have any more questions!! i’d love to help!!! phanpara is sm fun…

ok so . here are all the steps !!

1) make a new appstore account!!

this step is easy :3 … i don’t. remember how i did it tho. pretty sure you just go to the appstore browser page?? or something.., and then you obv just need to add a name and a functional email address!

when you’ve made a new account, make sure that your ios is logged into it . just go to settings -> click your profile -> click on the appstore icon -> log out from your usual account and log in on the new one!! then you just need to press ”show account” to go to the next step.

2) change your region to japan!!

this is the complicated step. it’s not really that complicated though it just took me a while to figure it out 😭😭 you can use this site for reference if my descriptions confuse you lol

when you try to change your region to japan, you’ll be forced to add your name and your address. you can use your normal name (assuming it’s made up of english letters), but you’ll need to generate a jp address!! it’s actually kinda easy. this is the website i used!! it lists all the information you need in the correct order, so just . copy and paste into the settings . (i believe you’ll need to choose the prefecture manually, so just look at the prefecture name on the website and match it with the options ios gives you!!) street name, prefecture, city, zip code, phone number… etcetc. this may or may not be an illegal process but if you’re a gacha enjoyer i’m assuming you like living life on the edge.

you’ll also get the option to add a payment method, but you should be able to skip it by choosing the option at the bottom. this is important because otherwise it won’t let you change your region (unless you happen to have a japanese credit card hanging around)….

when you’ve entered all the necessary information, click the blue text in the top right corner to move on!! if you’ve done everything correctly you should be taken to the jp appstore :3

3) download phanpara + ovpnspider!!

now you’re almost done!!! downloading phanpara should be easy, just search for it in the appstore and. well. download it. when i did this i had to click through some ios popup page..??? but just . click your way through it. trial and error. until it lets you download the app <33

while phanpara is loading, download ovpnspider!! this one is super easy and doesn’t take up much space at all. when it’s finished downloading, just go into the app, go to the ”jp” folder and connect to one of the vpns!! the status has to be ”alive”, but any of them should work :3

4) play phanpara !!

now you should be good to go <33 the only issue is that the vpn can be a little difficult sometimes. phanpara might take a bit to load, and throw you out if the vpn disconnects, but as long as you just exit the app and change the vpn there shouldn’t be any issues. could be a little bothersome sometimes but you get used to it quickly!! just make sure that you’re connected to a vpn, enter phanpara, and play :33 for me it takes up roughly 5gbs of space, so make sure your phone can handle it!!

aaaaand that’s it <333 i’m sorry if this is just. gibberish 😭😭 or if i’m making it sound more complicated than it is …. and pls let me know if it works for you!!! i’d love to be friends in game if you make an account :33 then you’ll be able to use my gojo in battle … hehehe ……..

[en-abime-updates]

June 15th

Morning

Mal posts the player-made zine on FreeDF. You can find it by adding the URL slug /dans-des-circonstances-eternelles to en-abime.com. She has decided to visit Tati, although it is unknown where she is right now.

Since the zine mentions a twin by name, they visit it and share a PowerPoint of all the information they had about Thomas (accessible through clicking the glitch on the page.) (It is unknown where the twin is right now.) A letter in a different font (the “T” on “The Incident”) links to w-h-a-t-h-a-p-p-e-n-e-d.

Summary: This PowerPoint includes a photo of Thomas and the details around his disappearance: He was a freshman exchange student at Princeton University in New Jersey whose parents had died 2 years before of the flu. He went missing in October of 1915 – he checked into a carrel in the library and never checked out. (The footnotes note these carrels are now in Firestone Library.) He was “kind of an introvert” but an “excellent student,” so no one noticed he was missing until months later. The Works Cited page of the PPT only lists en-abime.com as well as the page for requesting visitor access to Firestone Library. Players speculate this may be the site of a geocache.

The zine page also links to Mal’s Favorite Gigs in NYC. This page begins as a blank page and populates with pop-ups addressing the reader as you scroll down, before showing a list of Mal’s bands and performance venues – potentially another geocache lead? It also features a voice that speaks in blackout poetry, similar to the blackout poetry sections of the CYOA.

Summary: The pop-ups ask the reader to record information about themselves (to presumably join the abime) – “Log on now!” “Share abundantly your photographs, experiences, and stories with your friends.” It then presents Mal’s list of gigs as “a gift.” The list of gigs lists the band and location of each performance, as well as a short description of Mal’s experience performing with them. Mal’s handwritten note at the top reads “if you haven’t got an I.D., even a fake one, FORGET ABOUT IT, DUDETTE!” Below the gig list, the pop-ups ask the reader to “Match them with the right keys to the kingdom” for an “instantaneous cure,” “but hurry, a machine for living won’t be hanging around for long.” Below this, the blackout poetry voice begins, imploring the reader to “stop feeding us.” Their requests and cries for help are similar in tone to the ones in the CYOA.

Mal’s Favorite Gigs page leads to HELP, what looks like a customer service page with a set of Q&As and a form. The page is written by (and the Q&As are answered) by the same voices from the Mal’s Gigs page (Ad pop-ups and blackout poetry). The header at the top of the page toggles between “archive” and “appetite” on hover, and “appetite” is “all” while “ARCHIVE” is “NOTHING.” The form is “for Urgent Retrieval Concerns” and asks the reader to “DESCRIBE: WHAT YOU SEE. WHERE YOU ARE. WHERE YOU HAVE SOUGHT. WHERE YOU HAVE NOT YET SOUGHT.”

Summary: The two voices describe themselves as brothers, and have very different personalities. The popup voice describes itself as our “friend,” and encourages the questioner to find “these things” and “make them happy.” The question text eventually goes off the rails: (“Why is my skin so heavy? Why are my eyeballs so dry? Why are my bones so wet?”) to which the popup text voice answers, “You aren’t there yet, friend, but you’re doing well!” In contrast, the blackout poetry voice describes itself as our “bastard creation” and says that if we are “here” it has “failed.” It begs us to “please don’t go looking for this [...] please instead forget all about this. About them. About me.” On the left side of the page are a list of what seems to be various manifestations of HEAVEN, a series of tips that seem to be for geocaching, and there is a form at the bottom that asks for location, time, name of who they are looking for, and a description of their location.

Afternoon/Evening

Players submit form responses to HELP, most of which receive unhelpful answers via email. 

Players submitting questions to the form received a response from the email en-abime-dot-com@gmail.com from a username THE ARCHIVE THE APPETITE. Most contained a screenshot of their question and a popup image reading “USE TOOLS FOR THEIR INTENDED PURPOSE.” Some emails contained an additional image reading “HA!HA!HA!” 

At 2:41 PM EST, player sylvan receives a reply to his email “bonjour” with the additional image “I DON’T SPEAK FRENCH” and the subject line “19/20” A minute earlier at 2:40, another player Vincent received a similar email with the subject line “20/20.” Later, Vincent receives another, this time with the subject line “18/20.” Players decide not to send more emails until figuring out more about the “INTENDED PURPOSE” so the countdown stops. 

At around midnight, player charles entertainment cheese sends a question: “We have looked everywhere. We are Thomas stretched across En Abime. I want to know where he entered from - Princeton? New Jersey? The Library? We have looked across as many pages as we have. We have found him in PDFs and websites where his past self is recorded and archived.” This receives a different response, without a countdown number, hinting that these questions are closer to the “INTENDED PURPOSE” and “for greater knowledge on more subjects, use your library often!”

Overall Theories

Players think these pop-ups and blackout text are two new characters, the Archive and the Appetite, which may be made up of the Abime itself. They seem more powerful than the other characters and may have placed the flyers around the different locations. They seem to want us to find whatever information they don’t yet know, and are interested in physical geocaches. 

Next steps from this update:

Follow these geocache leads

Crack w-h-a-t-h-a-p-p-e-n-e-d

Figure out the purpose of the HELP form

[taskforcedistortion]

Wait, what do you mean you guys are in charge? What happened?

Sssso

One of our friends! Wanted to visit someone else to take a break from some stuff he's dealing with

The computer, the TASKFORCE DISTORTION WORK COMPUTER I AM ON 24/7

Got a POPUP WARNING labeled from: "THOSE BEYOND YOU"

Saying that it wasn't a good idea- hold on let me get the screenshot

[Picture ID: A popup warning on Cassiopeia's computer. Labeled from 'THOSE BEYOND YOU'

In bold large letters

WARNING. A PROTAGONIST OF THE BLUE BERRY ACADEMY IS ATTEMPTING TO LEAVE THE TIMELINE, ALLOW HIM TO EXIT?

[Y/N]

And in smaller letters

Please note, that if you allow this, events that he has already done will be reset

End of ID]

SO!

YEAH I'M KINDA FREAKED OUT-!

-C [Purple C for Cassiopeia]

[quackity1999]

"i mean— it's a weird mix. some of you come in the form of letters, some of you are the weird, noisy pop-up ads, some people i meet in person. it's a variation of stuff."

LN ARCHIVES: MASTERPOST ON Q'S CHAT!!

OKAY. cracks my knuckles.

much like how other characters in the dream smp have physical manifestations of their twitch chat, i thought it'd be fun to apply that here — since this is a c!quackity ask blog.

anons function similarly to a twitch chat, which is why i decided that q's chat wasn't a duck pond for originality!

3 categories: people / actual pop ups / and letters or documents.

[ TAGGING SYSTEM ] + [ PINNED ]

POP UPS: this applies to all asks that aren't letters or in-person situations.

these asks are visual pop-ups (boxes, like those virus advertisements you get on a computer, ykykyk) that show up in quackity's peripheral vision. the pop ups can't interact with him physically since they're just text— but they pile up and overlap if he doesn't address them. he can swipe them away with his hands, of course. quackity either responds to them verbally (only if he's alone to avoid looking bonkers.) or mentally (if he's got company.)

examples ; THIS , THIS , THIS , AND THIS .

LETTERS / DOCUMENTS: these asks are formatted + physical, often delivered to quackity's desk. pretty cut and dry.

examples ; THIS, THIS , AND THIS.

PEOPLE: these asks are physical interactions. yk. when people are within his office, or give him something, or touch him, or come to give updates about LN— etc. anon examples: 🟣👓, ♾️🪞, and a few others.

examples ; THIS , THIS , THIS, AND THIS.

NOTE: literate interactions are NOT my primary style of writing. i'm an ask blog with some teeeensy aspects of roleplay— i almost always write in dialogue! yes, even in response to some literate interactions. i don't respond to rp starters unless i'm writing an event + have planned those interactions with another writer. respect that :3 thank yew!! [ also for the love of prime herself, pleeease, READ PINNED. it'll help. i swear. it's easy peasy lemon squeezy. 5 mins! ]

lengthy asks always tend to overwhelm / slow me down, and while that isn't a bad thing, i do prefer short-mid length asks on a regular basis. this doesn't rule out occasional long letters & shit tho :)

EXTRA INFO:

as for the anons side of things, i'd imagine it's similar to either watching a TV show you can send in notes / commentary / questions into, or literally being a citizen of LN. or, for some, working in the nation itself. (we need more workers pleasepleas.e pleas e its so fucking cool dude i love writing professional fancy shit olealplease i beg i beg i plead)

the anons cannot press too hard on changing what lore i have set up. you can add in little details if you like, or base details off of what canon i've already shown thru this blog (LOVE THAT), but anons aren't going to be aware of absolutely everything nor can they possess or control quackity's actions. keep that in mind <3

IMPORTANT: i've seen a few dsmp blogs using my pop-up idea, and while that's chill, i politely suggest taking inspo from the cc's interpretation of their chat. :3

i made quackity's anons function as popup ads rather than a duck pond or something basic, since it reflects his chaotic sort of character— from what i recall, tommy (?) had a nokia phone, jack uses his ingame headset, phil has crows and techno has voices.

bascially, i'd much rather see ppl coming up with their own versions of their anons/chat. or at least credit me for the pop-up idea!

i hope this clears things up :3 if there's questions or confusions i am more than happy to respond!

[britt-kageryuu]

The result of a funny thought after watching a video. I don't know what I'm talking about in this, the idea was just funny.

----------------

April was slightly annoyed, but still excited as she enters the building in front of her which pushing a rolling cart with a carrier on top.

The building was hosting a Cat Show.

Mikey had heard about it and wanted to enter Sunny, but couldn't get the day off, too many people wanted that day off already. The others had similar schedule problems, and/or they had streaming obligations on top of that.

So he begged April to go in his place. So here she was,entering a cat show as a favor for her Little Brother, who now owes her a Gourmet Lunch Bento everyday for 2 weeks.

She approached the checkin area to ask what she needs to do.

"Name, Breed, and category?" Asked the Receptionist.

April for a second almost said her own name, but caught herself, "This is Sunny, she's a Short Hair, and the category House Cat. She's my brothers cat, but he couldn't get the time off since he just learned about Cat Shows recently." April relays as she fills out the necessary papers, and whatnot.

"Okay, here's your number, just keep your ears and eyes out for when your group is called for judging." The Receptionist says while handing April a couple packets of information, and points toward the room where people were setting up their waiting area.

April gets to her table, and sets up the little popup tent with a letter tray, cat bed, and some small toys. All while giving Sunny pets, treats, and making sure her bandana/collar was on properly. It had one of the 2 or 3 tracking devices in it, you can never be too careful.

The day goes on with April talking with others there, all showing off their cats, showing videos or pictures of said cats, and talking about how things work.

Sunny is fairly popular among, getting lots of compliments, and requests for pictures. Some asking about the lovely feline.

And April would tell them, "My Brother found her after she somehow got into the car in a closed garage. We took her to the vet, clean bill of health, but she had no chip. And after not finding any missing cat posters, or getting responses for our Found Cat. So We kept Sunny and the rest is history. My Little Bro believes it was the cat distribution system choosing us."

Things of course got a bit tense when it was time to bring the cats up for one of the multiple rounds of judging. Some people were more dramatic, and claiming bribery when their Precious Kitty didn't get any ribbons.

April just tried to keep her cool, and be glad that Cass and CJ were to busy to join her, though sadly Sunita was at a family event so had to opt out of this event.

"Is it always like watching one of those kids pageant shows? Or am I just 'Lucky' to witness this drama?" She asked one of her table neighbors while sending an update to Mikey about how things are going.

"Well, it's not always this dramatic, but it happens pretty often. Why did you ask if you were 'Lucky'?" One of them who had a Maincoon.

April sighs with a flat look, "I was known for my weird Luck in school. Once had the sprinkler above me go off, and it was the only one to go off."

Her table neighbors were trying to tell if she was joking or not, but gave her the benefit of the doubt.

Once the next few rounds were done, and the final Judgment. Sunny now proudly had a ribbon, but let's not elaborate on which color or place it was for. They were all proud of Sunny anyway.

----------------------

Masterpost

I was recommended a video of someone going to a Cat Show for the first time, and remembered that they existed. Then thought 'Any Mikey with a cat would want to enter them in one, but then remember the turtle thing... then ask April for Help'.

But I don't know how Cat Shows work, so I just kinda worked off the video I watched, and some of the comments under it.

[whirligig-girl]

Ooze that's learned how to pilot

Eaurp held up the bright yellow disk cassette with one hand and shook their other hand until their fingers threatened to fling off. They emitted a high pitched whine, and a hissing sound, in addition to the sounds of wobbling jello from their shaking body.

"What is it?" Slamtha said.

"ITS! MY VERY OWN COPY!!!" They said, still vibrating with an intensity that never failed to amaze her.

"Of..." Slamtha said.

"Whuh? Oh! I told you about it!" Eaurp said. "During History class?"

"Oh right. Starship simulator?"

"SHUTTLECRAFT SIMULATOR!" Eaurp said. "Come on! Let's get to a library computer!"

"Oh... I dunno," Slamtha said. "I'm not sure I'd be very good at it."

"Oh pleeeease Slamtha? I'll go clothes shopping with you even though thinking about clothes for too long makes me want to dessicate!"

"Hmm. Alr--"

"Come on! It'll be fun!" Eaurp said, grabbing and tugging Slamtha's hand so hard they almost melded together.

Slamtha laughed. "Ok, ok, fine, let's go."

At the library, Eaurp plugged the disk cassette into the disk drive, and opened up their account on the desk terminal. Slamtha scooted up next to Eaurp with a laptop terminal in hand.

"I got to try this before, at the Starfleet booth at the job fair. Apparently they don't even distribute these for personal use, I had to write a letter to Starfleet's public relations department, and then I had to use the disk burner in the computer science lab."

"Oh, why didn't we just go play in the computer lab?" Slamtha said.

"They're running on like 15 year old mainframes. I think it might still work, but only if I set the computer up as a single partition. And I don't want to get kicked out."

After the disk drive lit up green, Eaurp grinned at Slamtha, who stared back with a neutral gaze.

The menu loaded in as a faux-LCARS display. Eaurp had already been through the training level on a Type-9, so they skipped it and went right for the Class-F, the vintage shuttlecraft that they used to use on the original Enterprise.

There was a barebones character select function, since they were in multiplayer. Slamtha chose a generic human woman. Eaurp figured they may as well do the same. The session began, and Eaurp walked their character around the shuttle, taking in its details. The graphics were so realistic, they must have been based on original schematics to look this good.

The mission was simple--land the Class-F on the M-class planet in a storm, drop off supplies, then take off and return to orbit.

Slamtha and Eaurp's characters sat down. Eaurp leaned over Slamtha's console, pointing out all of the individual displays and controls. Eaurp sat to Slamtha's left, so they couldn't see her frown.

"I... don't think I'm cut out for this," Slamtha said.

"Oh come on, you haven't even tried it yet," Eaurp said.

"Ok, well, don't say I didn't warn you."

Eaurp flicked the internal power switch, then used the communicator item to call for the airlock doors to be opened, and then engaged the antigrav tractor-pressor, and slowly rose the shuttlecraft off of the hangar deck. Eaurp looked around, scanning for the manuevering thrusters. She flicked a switch, and the simulated computer made a satisfying clickit-a-clickit-a sound. She pressed the arrow keys on her keyboard and the translation joystick on the shuttle moved forward.

"As soon as we get out of the shuttlebay, we'll be outside of the Constitution's inertial dampeners. Be prepared to keep us pitched right. Crossing through space doors in three... two... one..."

"Ah!" Slamtha shouted, as the stars suddenly lurched and spun.

"Woah! Woah!" Eaurp said. "Turn on auto-inertial dampeners!"

Slamtha frantically looked across the simulated console and the keybind popups and grimaced. She settled on hitting the spacebar. Both character's views got thrown back into the seat as the impulse engine was activated. From there, it all happened fast. The game lagged a few frames, then the warp nacelle got larger and larger, and then the shuttlecraft clipped into the nacelle. The shuttle shook and vibrated violently as horrible collision sound effects overlapped.

"Woah, look!" Eaurp said, switching to the external camera. The shuttlecraft was clipping through the great big cylindrical warp nacelle, with the impulse engine still firing. "They simulated the reaction control system on the Constitution!" Manuevering thrusters shot bursts of gas from the ends of the Consitution's warp nacelles, from behind the covered grates, fighting the impulse engine exhaust from the shuttle.

"WHAT DID I DO?" Slamtha shouted.

"Haha! I think you mixed up the stabilizer key and the impulse engine ignition, right at the same time that I mixed up the ventral translation key with the throttle keys!" Eaurp said.

"So... it wasn't my fault?" Slamtha said.

"It's both of our faults!" Eaurp said.

"Oh. Hah. Hahaha!" Slamtha said. "Ahaha. I thought... nevermind."

"What?" Eaurp said.

"I... I dunno. I was nervous because I knew you'd be so much better, but, ahah, we both just really suck at this!" Slamtha said.

"Let's go back to the tutorial level and try again!" Eaurp said. "The LCARS layout of the Type-2 is a lot simpler, and they do a pretty good job of simulating it here!"

"Ok, ok."

5 years later

Tears and melted sclerae rolled down Slamtha's cheeks, dripping onto the command console. She was pretty sure she still remembered how this thing worked.

Why had Eaurp left her. Why had Slamtha's kin turned their backs on her. Why had everything fallen apart so quickly. Things were finally good. They were finally good. She was a glob-dam astronaut candidate for the United Mellanus Space Program. She was going to get to do archaeology on another planet!

But! She tore it all apart! This little psychological episode was gonna make sure she'd never see the inside of another spacecraft again. So she'd better make this one count.

Slamtha sobbed, barely able to see the LCARS display and the front window. She saw the mellanoid space program safety officers running back to the shuttle. Now or never. She tapped the impulse engine control and the engine ignited. The shuttlecraft slid on its nacelles like skids, until she pressed her fingers to the steering widget, just barely managing to pitch up in time to avoid hitting the wall at the edge of the spaceport.

Ascent to orbit usually only took a few minutes, but Slamtha had other plans. She tilted straight up, climbing in a straight line path out of the atmosphere, rocketing ever higher and faster. She wiped her eyes clean and tried to reform them, and got one last look at the planet below.

"Alright," sniffled Slamtha, "which one of these is the warp engine?"

Slamtha swiped up on the main control panel and then found a promising looking button, then tapped it. The rescue shuttle jumped to warp, aiming no particular direction except for far, far away.

Slowly, Slamtha's cardiovasculature calmed down, and her skin softened, and she thought about what had just happened. Then she started crying all over again. What had she done. Maybe... maybe if she just turned back now and explained what she had been through, then... no. She'd just stolen one of the only warp capable ships on Mellanus, and taken it on a joyride. She'd never be able to go back. What was she going to do? Set a course for San Francisco and run into Eaurp? Slamtha didn't even know what star Earth orbited. Maybe the LCARS in the shuttle did.

She didn't want to see Eaurp again. That backstabbing good-for-nothing so-called "friend" who abandoned her just because she couldn't handle a fraction of the transphobia that Slamtha had to put up with her whole life.

She had her own ship. She could go anywhere. She could go places that didn't care if you were a woman or not. She could find some... alien university, maybe? And finish her archaeology internship somehow? But... but... no, no, none of this makes sense. Eaurp got to escape! Why couldn't she escape? Why couldn't she--a red alarm flashed on the screen, indicating a ship was approaching. They were hailing her.

"Fuck." Slamtha said. "It's probably the Feds come to arrest me. Ok, ok, act natur--"

The ship shook violently as a bright green light fired at her.

The display panel read "shields down."

A green tractor beam locked on. Slamtha tilted her head to look up above her. That wasn't a Federation ship. It was huge, dark green and orange, winged, with glowing red spikes coming out of the hull.

"Computer, identify?" Slamtha said, her voice shaky.

Vessel is a heavily modified Orion Class-II freighter. Klingon derived engines and type-V disruptor strips.

"That doesn't sound like a freighter."

It wasn't.

[artemisiasthings]

bookbinding question: how did you format the pages so that they read in the correct order when stacked and folded into signatures?

Hi! I use Word to create my signatures and typeset them to read like a book. I followed amazing tutorials from Hana Bobb on TikTok - I'd really recommend looking at her content but here's the bare bones! (If you use other applications this probably won't be as helpful for you, I'm sorry!)

First things first, you need to get your word document set up. From the top ribbon, go to Layout, then select Margins > Custom Margins which will open a page setup popup window. Here are the page size, margins, and layout settings I use:

My margins are set based on US Letter sized paper. I find that they're not too big but allowed me to trim the foredges and don't eat up the text in the spine.

HOWEVER, if you're typesetting a really large fic, you're going to want to increase your side margins! For example, I am typesetting a tandem read of TRTTD/ATWT that is 900+ pages and my side margins are .65" to compensate for the deeper, rounded spine and the amount I'll have to trim off the foredge.

If you're uncertain if you like your margins, you can do test prints of the first signature to see how your margins end up looking.

Our page orientation is landscape because, although we want our individual pages to be portrait, each landscape page will have two portrait pages.

By setting the "multiple pages" setting to book fold, you will automatically print into signatures that you can then sew and glue into a book.

Sheets per booklet is really personal preference, just in mind that one sheet of paper is equal to FOUR book pages (two front and two back). So my 32 page booklets take 8 sheets of paper. Some people do 7, others do up to 10! It's harder to punch holes in 8+ pages of signatures, but easier to sew in my opinion.

From here, you can input your text! You can post the raw html from AO3 into the document which which bring over the text and general formatting, and you can format chapters, headings, title pages, etc. from there. This is a time consuming process but is really helpful when familiarizing yourself with how typesetting works. If you do go with this option, I'd again recommend Hana Bobb's detailed tutorials - she goes over incredible info for newbies and I wouldn't be half as good as I am without her guidance.

If you're not interested in deep diving on typesetting, you can do what I do now which is use a Word macro from the macro mommy herself - Blak Books Bindery.

She has some incredible macros which allow you to quickly and easily add text dividers, drop caps, and so much more to your typesets! The one I use the most is her "Raw-Text Formatting" macro which allows you to copy raw text directly from AO3 into the word document and turn it into a formatted typeset through computer magic. I usually just use this as a starting point and heavily adjust the aesthetics from there, but it saves so much time moving author notes, formatting chapters into sections, adding title and publishing pages, etc.

After your typeset is formatted how you want it, you can print it! I typically go into File > Print and select "Print to PDF."

This allows you to save the document as a PDF. You can print directly from Word but I haven't tried it since people say it really messes up the formatting.

Your finished typeset file should look something like this:

Just print this double sided with "flip on the short edge" selected, and start folding! Even if you're super confident about your typeset, I would highly recommend test printing your first signature on paper you don't care about. I've caught misaligned page numbers, margin issues, and other problems this way and saved myself the headache and reams of paper.

That's it! I hope this answered your question, I went probably went overboard but I'm not sure what knowledge you're working with so I wanted to be thorough. If you or anyone else has any other questions, feel free to reach out through asks or DMs!

[artemisandhersilverbow]

If there are no fans of Taylor's lyric vids it's because I'm dead. They add so much richness to already elite lyrics. But I was immediately suspicious during The Manuscript video.

Because my understanding of what a manuscript is, is the following:

I had assumed, like many prior to the album drop, this was meant to make us think of books. These days in publishing a manuscript will be typed, but it's not the book in its final form.

In the Tortured Poet's library popups in a couple cities, there were a lot of books. Blank ones, damaged ones, ones with the names of TTPD song titles, and notably a handwritten "Story of Us." That hand written Story of Us then showed up in the Fortnight MV. Interesting...

Of course, any long time fan knows the role Taylor's diaries play in her music making as well. Her music has always sounded confessional and it's been one component of her musical super power. During Lover promo, excerpts from her diaries were sold alongside the album. She's underscored their importance many times.

So imagine my surprise when The Manuscript video... doesn't show a manuscript...

That is a screenplay.

And I click back to the first seconds of the video... looking at those underlined letters and asked myself... is it The Man U Script? *if i was a maaaAAn*

The way she has these lyrics written out in screenplay form... we're watching a scene narrating the "She" character reading something unpublished, perhaps handwritten, perhaps a diary, maybe lyrics. I assume the "HE" which is in voiceover is what she's reading and her lines are spoken.

Anyway, I wont break down the full scene because I haven't watched it in this new light yet. But this tension between the song name at first glance - something unpublished or handwritten. Messy, unfinished, not meant for the public, perhaps even at its most authentic... vs. characters in roles. Men that are scripted... well that's adding a whole knew dimension to it.

I really appreciate how before I watched this, the song feels like it's told in vignettes and time moves dramatically. But I didn't appreciate the play on POV initially (and there's a ton of it in this - very good - album)

Also noteworthy that, yes, there seems to be reference to the ATW short film, which makes even more sense to me now.

But anyway, the narrative about this album has once again become about the men. Which isn't new, but always disappointing. Genuinely, I got something really different out of this album by not focusing on solving those romance riddles with my own confirmation bias. The other story, the one about a singular artist, percolating beneath the surface is far more interesting to me.

It wouldn't be the first time she's called out the people who consume her work in this album and, frankly, it's one of my favorite things about it. It's cutting and it's earned. It's also heartbreaking. But for a song that confused me, is the bonus on all the regular editions of TTPD, I think it would be a lot more satisfying if this is the message she's leaving us with. That once I publish my work, my stories, in it's final constructed/edited form, I've moved from the place I was when I experienced them. And then when its published the truths you seek to dig out from my words don't belong to me - it belongs to you. Just a thought.

Edit:

I think there are a lot of ways to read this. In conversation with the fans/outsiders is the main one, which I touch on before.

But for a more literal reading using some clues from the video, I know how Taylor can’t resist utilizing a number when it’s available for a little clue. Now I think reading each page number by era… is actually a fun (still devastating) way to do that. As you’ll imagine 3 and 4 are where those lines show up.

But we end on 7 where she’s accepting she doesn’t own those albums anymore, but all that she’s left with is the manuscript - which I would guess is her music (published and unpublished) and diaries.

Lover era + promo diary era was her first entirely owned era, but as the song says “looking back” or re-recording/vault tracks/doing it on your terms is the only way to move forward.

Also how about the hard to catch glitch over the words “the actors”?

[nitrosodiumgameanglia]

Changing the Font

To better fit the fact that the writing is on paper, I added a font called Study Clash. I think this helps the suspension of disbelief, and makes the default Unreal font less jarring to see.

Many games have famous and instantly recognizable fonts. These usually help to sell the setting and help any text popups fit the world instead of being intrusive and immersion-destroying.

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind has a few fonts (including one entirely in the Daedric alphabet), but this font is the main one. It somewhat resembles a typical "Olde English" style of lettering, but more readable by modern people. The same font is used in all menus, including the journal and inventory, which keeps the immersion. It makes it seem like you are rifling through old books and scrolls when you check your spell lists and skills, which keeps you rooted in the rich setting of Vvardenfell better than a more overtly "gamey" menu would. This is one of my few complaints about The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, that it ditches the paper backgrounds for a more minimalist menu system with a normal font.

Quake's main font is quite interesting. For one, the Q is a spike being driven through an eclipse, but the other characters are archaic and rusty-looking. This works for Quake's setting, which is a journey through dark and terrifying dimensions that have been corrupted by the Lovecraftian elder god Shub-Niggurath. Most of the locations are somewhat medieval; sunken oubliettes and massive imposing castles. The textures are covered with rust, moss, and other entropic grime, and the font is no exception, almost like it was engraved into wrought-iron.

Minecraft's menu font is called Mojangles, but I find the title font more interesting. It is almost cyclopean, resembling thick stone blocks, with cracks and weathering on its surface. It fits the gameplay quite well, which is of course mining through and building with a lot of different types of stone. It is also relatively cartoony, with thick shadows giving it an oblique look, which fits with the stylised blocky aesthetic of Minecraft.

All in all, my research has shown that the best fonts for games are those which exacerbate the game's theme. Therefore, for use in menus, I have also picked up the font "Bad Coma" and the font "City Burn".

I chose these fonts because they look partially destroyed and decaying, which relates to the neurodegeneration caused by Alzheimer's.

[kustar-ryumi]

Hi! Sorry to bother you but I need a little help on how to change the page on carrd, I'm just wondering if there is like a link or something to create separately from the home page and make it clickable for the buttons? Like what you did for your about me and faq page.

Thanks :)

alrighty!!!. cracking knuckles (view images from left->right)

Press the (+) icon!! There should be a popup, you should be able to find (# Control) at the bottom right corner of that popup <- press it.

Section Control should come up after pressing it. KEEP EVERYTHANG THE SAME. The only thing that should be changed is the section name. (For example: About Me = #aboutme)(<-section names only allow lowercase letters, no uppercase)

Since your buttons are already set up, you can just set the buttons URL as that section's name (include the '#')

You can start putting stuff under that section!!

btw i recommend you put a button for 'home' (URL for that button is #home)(dont want anyone to be stuck in a section LOLL)

Anyways, here's a way to view only one section or all of them while editing!! (when you make a new section, click on that new section and a blank page will show up, you can work to your hearts delight!!)

yeahhhhhh sorry if this is all super yada yada!! :3

[grandlinewiki]

Welcome to the Wiki Tumblr!

Hoi!

This it the tumblr for Grand Line Wiki, a One Piece wiki project I have been spending over a year on now. The goal of this tumblr is to garner some general support and notability but also just to update what gets added, why I do what I do, and to generally have fun as I make it. You can expect consistent One Piece content and a cool look into the manga/anime/video games/music of One Piece <3

Any support at all is extremely helpful as this is a one gal project and it takes time but I hope you enjoy the content regardless, so please expect plenty to come!

Website: grandlinewiki.net

Wiki Patreon: patreon.com/grandlinewiki

Wiki Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/jadeparcels

FAQ:

(↓ Under here ↓)

→ Why are you making a wiki if there's already a fandom/wikia for One Piece?

A few reasons but without going super in depth, the current wikia has it's issues as some of the pages aren't consistent or accurate as well as the fact that fandom has made their website difficult to use due to the massive amount of advertising and popups. My overall goal is to be ad free on this wiki as well as being a comprehensive, thorough, and enjoyable database that is fun to go through.

→ The news on the home page hasn't updated!

Yes, the home page for right now is more of a landing page as filling in the wiki itself is of higher priority. I hope to actually be able to give daily updates later on but for now, it'll help you get where you need :3

→ The search bar doesn't work!

Yes, while i have played around with it, it hasn't been the first priority since there's nothing worth searching for if the pages don't exist/haven't been filled in. This will be towards the end as I still have manga, anime, and character pages to fill in and complete. For now you can use the buttons on the left side to get to the main sections and when the homepage is redone, it'll have a comprehensive sidebar that will span all aspects so you can check out what ever you like.

→ How long do you think it'll take?

I'll be honest, it's been a rough year and to not even have the manga section done is it's own bummer (╥ω╥) BUT patreon support would help so much as it would fund the wiki and help to somewhat keep me afloat as I dedicate more time to it. Overall, expect it to be another year at least, I will do my best to make it exciting to follow and with luck (and a lot of coffee) I can have something solid by this time next year.

→ Can I make suggestions, throw out ideas for what I'd like to see?

Yes!! I love hearing other peoples ideas and this wiki is a love letter! It only makes sense if other peoples love for One Piece is included! If I don't respond right away, I apologize but I will do my best to get to every idea and will let you know if it's worth doing, if it would take awhile, and how soon i could do it. ⸜( *ˊᵕˋ* )⸝

[theriu]

Hey guys! So I have definitely had some Feelings about this post, but you know what? Despite my severe dislike of some parts of this, there are some good concepts in this plan, too. I do want to acknowledge the bits I think sound like good ideas and show that we as users aren’t JUST raging about everything. So in an effort to be fair, I’m going to point out a few points that are smart AND a few that do not make any sense from my 10+ years experience. I hope this will be helpful!

✅

This is a little vague, but I do like the direction. Tumblr CAN be cofusing when you are just getting started; the tag system especially was mystifying to me when I first logged on in 2012. I’m all for exploring ways to help new users understand how to get started! Perhaps a simple popup tutorial when a person makes their first account, like on some game apps?

❌

What… I don’t… what???? Literally every person I have ever talked to or heard from on this subject (in OVER TEN YEARS) has said that the ability to curate our experience is a PRIMARY OPTIMAL FEATURE of tumblr! Who are you guys talking to who made you think this only serves a small portion of your audience?!? Curatability is one of your most unique and biggest assets!

✅

That sounds like a good idea, honestly! I personally enjoy getting lots of notes, but I know lots of people seek ways to mute notifications when they have a post go viral. This seems like a nice way to help users be less afraid of their posts blowing up (or at least minimize the debris XD) I don’t use push notifications myself but I assume this would also apply there.

❌

I’m guessing this is one of the points that had people thinking you guys were messing with the chronological feed. I point again at my confusion over your claim that a curated dashboard experience is a negative—we do not want random posts from people we don’t follow showing up on our dashboards, mainly because we do not trust algorithms to understand what we as individuals like. Consider how many of us never touch the For You tab because most of the posts on there completely miss the mark.

✅

I’m down for this! The app is certainly slow and buggy sometimes. (As I type this, my keyboard is lagging at least one letter behind what I am typing.) The second claim is kinda vague, but I think we can all agree fewer bugs would be appreciated!

❌❌❌

Tumblr.

@staff .

I am holding your face gently in my hands.

I am begging you with tears in my eyes

PLEASE OH PLEASE PLEASE NO DO NOT!!! COLLAPSE!!! THE REBLOG THREADS!!!

There is NO WAY an algorithm can reliably differentiate “clutter” from “vital pieces of a reblog conversation that are essential to making it funny.” This will inevitably truncate the conversations that are the main reason most viral tumblr posts go viral! More times than not, it’s not the FIRST part of a post that makes it classic—it’s the responses that build off it.

And remember your point about making it easier for new users to engage with the site? Skipping to the end of a chain or not being able to see WHY a post is funny or compelling without the extra (annoying) action of clicking some tiny dropdown arrow will make new users AND old users even less inclined to engage with posts! If ANY bullet point on this list can be rescinded, I BEG you to make it this one!

To wrap up: I do think some of the changes and improvements you guys are working on sound good! I just ask on behalf of myself and other users: Please consider how you can improve the TUMBLR experience, not how you can make us into a new twitter or reddit (both sites that use collapsible reblogs AND are currently having Major Issues). We’re not looking for more of those sites; we love tumblr because it’s the only social media site like it: a self-curated place to interact at the level each of us is comfortable with and share each others’ great posts and interactions, without feeling like products instead of people. That’s why we’re here. That’s why we stay.

Tumblr’s Core Product Strategy

Here at Tumblr, we’ve been working hard on reorganizing how we work in a bid to gain more users. A larger user base means a more sustainable company, and means we get to stick around and do this thing with you all a bit longer. What follows is the strategy we're using to accomplish the goal of user growth. The @labs group has published a bit already, but this is bigger. We’re publishing it publicly for the first time, in an effort to work more transparently with all of you in the Tumblr community. This strategy provides guidance amid limited resources, allowing our teams to focus on specific key areas to ensure Tumblr’s future.

The Diagnosis

In order for Tumblr to grow, we need to fix the core experience that makes Tumblr a useful place for users. The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use. Historically, we have expected users to curate their feeds and lean into curating their experience. But this expectation introduces friction to the user experience and only serves a small portion of our audience. 

Tumblr’s competitive advantage lies in its unique content and vibrant communities. As the forerunner of internet culture, Tumblr encompasses a wide range of interests, such as entertainment, art, gaming, fandom, fashion, and music. People come to Tumblr to immerse themselves in this culture, making it essential for us to ensure a seamless connection between people and content. 

To guarantee Tumblr’s continued success, we’ve got to prioritize fostering that seamless connection between people and content. This involves attracting and retaining new users and creators, nurturing their growth, and encouraging frequent engagement with the platform.

Our Guiding Principles

To enhance Tumblr’s usability, we must address these core guiding principles.

Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Retain and grow our creator base.

Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Improve the platform’s performance, stability, and quality.

Below is a deep dive into each of these principles.

Principle 1: Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Tumblr has a “top of the funnel” issue in converting non-users into engaged logged-in users. We also have not invested in industry standard SEO practices to ensure a robust top of the funnel. The referral traffic that we do get from external sources is dispersed across different pages with inconsistent user experiences, which results in a missed opportunity to convert these users into regular Tumblr users. For example, users from search engines often land on pages within the blog network and blog view—where there isn’t much of a reason to sign up. 

We need to experiment with logged-out tumblr.com to ensure we are capturing the highest potential conversion rate for visitors into sign-ups and log-ins. We might want to explore showing the potential future user the full breadth of content that Tumblr has to offer on our logged-out pages. We want people to be able to easily understand the potential behind Tumblr without having to navigate multiple tabs and pages to figure it out. Our current logged-out explore page does very little to help users understand “what is Tumblr.” which is a missed opportunity to get people excited about joining the site.

Actions & Next Steps

Improving Tumblr’s search engine optimization (SEO) practices to be in line with industry standards.

Experiment with logged out tumblr.com to achieve the highest conversion rate for sign-ups and log-ins, explore ways for visitors to “get” Tumblr and entice them to sign up.

Principle 2: Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

We need to ensure the highest quality user experience by presenting fresh and relevant content tailored to the user’s diverse interests during each session. If the user has a bad content experience, the fault lies with the product.

The default position should always be that the user does not know how to navigate the application. Additionally, we need to ensure that when people search for content related to their interests, it is easily accessible without any confusing limitations or unexpected roadblocks in their journey.

Being a 15-year-old brand is tough because the brand carries the baggage of a person’s preconceived impressions of Tumblr. On average, a user only sees 25 posts per session, so the first 25 posts have to convey the value of Tumblr: it is a vibrant community with lots of untapped potential. We never want to leave the user believing that Tumblr is a place that is stale and not relevant. 

Actions & Next Steps

Deliver great content each time the app is opened.

Make it easier for users to understand where the vibrant communities on Tumblr are. 

Improve our algorithmic ranking capabilities across all feeds. 

Principle 3: Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Part of Tumblr’s charm lies in its capacity to showcase the evolution of conversations and the clever remarks found within reblog chains and replies. Engaging in these discussions should be enjoyable and effortless.

Unfortunately, the current way that conversations work on Tumblr across replies and reblogs is confusing for new users. The limitations around engaging with individual reblogs, replies only applying to the original post, and the inability to easily follow threaded conversations make it difficult for users to join the conversation.

Actions & Next Steps

Address the confusion within replies and reblogs.

Improve the conversational posting features around replies and reblogs. 

Allow engagements on individual replies and reblogs.

Make it easier for users to follow the various conversation paths within a reblog thread. 

Remove clutter in the conversation by collapsing reblog threads. 

Explore the feasibility of removing duplicate reblogs within a user’s Following feed. 

Principle 4: Retain and grow our creator base.

Creators are essential to the Tumblr community. However, we haven’t always had a consistent and coordinated effort around retaining, nurturing, and growing our creator base.  

Being a new creator on Tumblr can be intimidating, with a high likelihood of leaving or disappointment upon sharing creations without receiving engagement or feedback. We need to ensure that we have the expected creator tools and foster the rewarding feedback loops that keep creators around and enable them to thrive.

The lack of feedback stems from the outdated decision to only show content from followed blogs on the main dashboard feed (“Following”), perpetuating a cycle where popular blogs continue to gain more visibility at the expense of helping new creators. To address this, we need to prioritize supporting and nurturing the growth of new creators on the platform.

It is also imperative that creators, like everyone on Tumblr, feel safe and in control of their experience. Whether it be an ask from the community or engagement on a post, being successful on Tumblr should never feel like a punishing experience.

Actions & Next Steps

Get creators’ new content in front of people who are interested in it. 

Improve the feedback loop for creators, incentivizing them to continue posting.

Build mechanisms to protect creators from being spammed by notifications when they go viral.

Expand ways to co-create content, such as by adding the capability to embed Tumblr links in posts.

Principle 5: Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Push notifications and emails are essential tools to increase user engagement, improve user retention, and facilitate content discovery. Our strategy of reaching out to you, the user, should be well-coordinated across product, commercial, and marketing teams.

Our messaging strategy needs to be personalized and adapt to a user’s shifting interests. Our messages should keep users in the know on the latest activity in their community, as well as keeping Tumblr top of mind as the place to go for witty takes and remixes of the latest shows and real-life events.  

Most importantly, our messages should be thoughtful and should never come across as spammy.  

Actions & Next Steps

Conduct an audit of our messaging strategy.

Address the issue of notifications getting too noisy; throttle, collapse or mute notifications where necessary.  

Identify opportunities for personalization within our email messages. 

Test what the right daily push notification limit is. 

Send emails when a user has push notifications switched off.

Principle 6: Performance, stability and quality.

The stability and performance of our mobile apps have declined. There is a large backlog of production issues, with more bugs created than resolved over the last 300 days. If this continues, roughly one new unresolved production issue will be created every two days. Apps and backend systems that work well and don't crash are the foundation of a great Tumblr experience. Improving performance, stability, and quality will help us achieve sustainable operations for Tumblr.

Improve performance and stability: deliver crash-free, responsive, and fast-loading apps on Android, iOS, and web.

Improve quality: deliver the highest quality Tumblr experience to our users. 

Move faster: provide APIs and services to unblock core product initiatives and launch new features coming out of Labs.

Conclusion

Our mission has always been to empower the world’s creators. We are wholly committed to ensuring Tumblr evolves in a way that supports our current users while improving areas that attract new creators, artists, and users. You deserve a digital home that works for you. You deserve the best tools and features to connect with your communities on a platform that prioritizes the easy discoverability of high-quality content. This is an invigorating time for Tumblr, and we couldn’t be more excited about our current strategy.